Meiji: Introduction Prelude to the Meiji era:   By 1615, following two centuries of feudal warfare, Lord Tokugawa consolidates his power over all of Japan, becoming shogun and ruling under the figurehead emperor.  More than two centuries of peace follow during which Japan remains semi-isolated from the rest of the world.  The samurai warrior class grows weaker and increasingly in debt to the merchant class which nominally ranks below it.  In 1853, four American steam warships under the command of Commodore Mathew Perry arrive and create a sensation throughout Japan. The country's relative weakness compared to the world's great maritime powers is now revealed to all. Segment 2 Perry showers his Japanese hosts with gifts and enters into negotiations with Japan for regular commercial relations while the "black ships" wait menacingly on the horizon.  Soon after, the samurai clans less loyal to the shogun express outrage at the assertion of power by the U.S. and European countries.  When they assasinate a few Westerners, they receive a severe lesson in naval bombardment.  Among the more progressive samurai, Yoshida Shoin proves to be one of the first and most adept at learning from the West.  He inspires followers who travel internationally.  They become an invaluable cadre of younger Japanese governmental leaders even as Japan descends into civil war.  Victorious rebel samurai clans install a new, boy emperor in Edo (Tokyo) and rule in his name: Meiji. Segment 3 The group of bright, young samurai take over from the defeated Shogun and form a government under the Emperor Meiji.  The great speed with which they affect sweeping changes causes deep societal stress and chaos.  Farmers erupt in mass protests over taxes and a new military draft.   By edict, the samurai lose their privileges and many are reduced to poverty.  General Saigo takes up their cause with the government but fails to persuade the new leaders of any need to preserve the samurai class.  He leads a major samurai revolt.  Defeated in a decisive battle against the new citizen army, he commits ritual suicide and the samurai are effectively no longer an elite class.  The last great social obstacle to Japan's early modern transformation has been removed Segment 4 The new era has a new slogan: “Civilization and Enlightenment.” It means, in a superficial way, the love of all things western.  It also means something more profound - a new sense that with the samurai gone, all would be equal under the rule of the emperor. Equality of opportunity means everyone suddenly has an incentive to improve their own lives by modernizing Japan. Such is the notion of Fukuzawa Yukichi who travels overseas and, more than any other, popularizes western ideas.  At first progress means aping all things western. For many citizens, this era means the beginning of electricity. But for many farmers daily life is bitter and hard. They work and want a say in the way the country is run. A conflict is building between the small group of Meiji leaders and those who want democracy – and a constitution. Segment 5 (Begins with discovery of a “people’s constitution” written by farmers.)  In early Meiji, people all over Japan are thinking about how to build a new nation.  By the late 1870s democratic ideas are sweeping the countryside. Pressure is building on the Meiji leaders to open up the government. Ito Hirobumi, an admirer of Bismarck, buys off the opposition with promises that within a decade there will be an assembly of elected representatives. But he intends, li8ke Bismark, to deliver not genuine democracy but an Imperial Bureaucracy that does what it wants to do in the name of national welfare--strengthening the state. Ito takes the Prussian Constitution and adapts it to the Japanese political stage.  In Bunraku, Japan’s classical puppetry, puppet handlers are in full view. But dressed in black, they seem to fade away behind the colorful puppets. In the same way, Ito and the other oligarchs seem to disappear behind the gaudy symbols of the new parliament and constitution. Politicians come and go, but the oligarchs stay in place, discrete but at center stage and in the action. Segment 6 Despite the oligarchs' maneuvering behind the emperor, elements of democracy slowly begin to seep into Japan’s parliamentary system. Meanwhile, the Meiji bureaucrats come up with a new slogan: “Rich Nation, Strong Military.”  To become rich and buy armaments, Japan vastly expands its silk exports.  Suddenly, the Japanese people enter a new economic reality: international supply and demand with all its ups and downs.  The government absorbs the surplus from the agriculture sector and transforms it, shifting it to the industrial sector.  Still, in trying to buy and build many war ships, it runs out of money.  The answer: subcontract the state’s goals to the private sector : The government subsidizes the industrial combines, the zaibatsus such as Mitsubishi,  to build ships. It’s an early version of what Americans call the Military Industrial Complex.  The speed of the Meiji transformation is breathtaking. Family silk farms lead to textile factories and then to steel mills. Fifteen years after Perry gave the Shogun a working miniature steam train, the Japanese have built their own, full scale railway from Tokyo to Yokohama!  Progress is fast but the human cost is proving to be very high indeed. Segment 7                  In textile mills, girls as young as 11 years old work 12-19 hours a day in stifling sweat shops. Conditions are even more severe in heavy industry, in the coal mines. The worst of these is Battleship Island outside of Nagasaki Harbor.  Owned by Mitsubishi, it is surrounded by a high wall meant to keep the sea out and the people in.  They are  prisoners, outcasts, and poor farmers.  Children join their mothers and fathers in the burning, hot shafts of the island’s hell. When people are caught trying to leave, they meet a horrible end. As Japan discovers, when a society moves rapidly from agriculture to industry, it can be a very costly and miserable transition. Segment 8                     While in Japan the cost of modernizing is high, in China the cost of not modernizing is even higher.  In the port cities, the weight of Western privilege is heavy. Poverty and hunger are everywhere. China has abundant manpower but its technology is as outmoded as its leadership.  The Empress Dowager and her advisers have ruthlessly manipulated the government, opposing reforms that threaten her hold on power.  Young Chinese reformers turn to Japan as a model for their country’s modernization.  It is where young people from all over East Asian hope to study. But Japan has yet to decide whether it is to lead an Asian renaissance against Western colonialism or whether it will in fact join in that colonialism.  It makes its choice in Korea. Under China’s protection Korea had tried to hide itself away from outside powers and the modern world.  But by the 1890s an industrializing Japan wants Korean rice and access to Korean markets.  In 1894 Japan invades Korea. Its modern army easily pushes China out. It then pushes on further into Manchuria over which Russia claims control.  Suddenly, Russia and Japan are on the brink of war over territory that was China’s. Segment 9                      In 1904 Japan launches a surprise attack on the Russian fleet, enabling Japan to eventually win a bloody land war in Manchuria. Its victory becomes an inspiration to reformists throughout Asia.  The Portsmouth Treaty makes Korea a Japanese protectorate. Koreans rebel and the Japanese respond by killing over 12,000 Koreans. Ito replaces Korea's king with his prince, a boy.  Korea is now a Japanese colony.  Asian reformists are already becoming disillusioned with Japan.  Japan's effort to attempt to destroy Korean culture and replace it with its own merely causes a Korean nationalist backlash against Japan with resentment that persists to the present day. Segment 10 Japan begins to ask itself about the real price of progress after becoming the industrial and military power of Asia.  Especially among Japan's literary community there is a new questioning of the cost of the rise to power.  Natsume Soseki (family name Natsuma but known popularly as jSoseki),  Japan's most famous novelist, creates characters who see the inevitability of modern times and yet they long for the old character of Japan that has been lost.  For Soseki, the streetcar symbolizes the loneliness of modern life.  In his most famous novel, Kokuro, Soseki recalls the ceremonies upon the death of the Emperor Meiji.  "To me it sounded like the last lament; the passing of an age."  For the first time a non-Western nation had modernized itself by its own efforts. It was an achievement that set in motion economic forces and political forces that are still working among us today.